


bucky must go

by hupsoonheng



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, M/M, New York City, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 08:16:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6898114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hupsoonheng/pseuds/hupsoonheng
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>sam wilson is an accommodating, generous man. so when steve asks to let his old friend james crash for a little while so he can look for a job and a real place to live, sam says sure, why not? what's the worst that could happen? </p><p>sam wilson discovers he is not a patient man. </p><p><i>"I'm not a monster, Steve," you interrupt, and for this, you do speak softer. "I get his problems. I do. The whole longass list, I do. I do! But trauma isn't something you get to impose on other people. Of all people," and you jab yourself right in the collarbone, </i>"I<i> know that." You swallow around the lump that's suddenly forming in your throat.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	bucky must go

**Author's Note:**

> i wasn't going to write another fic, but especially after a second viewing of civil war and that perfect rival dynamic bucky and sam had, i couldn't NOT write this. it COULD have more chapters in the future, but it probably won't, because of Obligations. except who knows!!!
> 
> also sorry about second person i guess, homestuck is a forever disease

Steve says he has news, and you're instantly suspicious. 

"What kind of news?" you ask, crossing your arms. 

"You know how you talk about getting a dog, sometimes?" Steve says, running a hand through his hair, which is forever sticking up in every direction, even when he doesn't mess with it like that. 

You snort. "Yeah, I talk about getting a dog, but I also talk about lying on a beach on a deserted island being hand-fed grapes and being fanned with banana leaves. In the meantime, I'm stuck in the real world, in an apartment that's definitely got no room for a dog." You pause. "Steve, please—and I mean _please_ —don't tell me you got us a dog." 

"Well, I, uh," he stammers, twisting his fingers together in front of him. 

"Steve!" Jesus Christ. He probably went to the animal shelter on his day off and saw a big golden labrador or something that looked just like him. You uncross your arms to round the corner into the entrance hallway, looking for Steve's furry twin or whatever other animal he brought home. But there's nothing. Not even a stray hair. 

"Of course I didn't bring home a dog without talking to you, Sam," Steve says as he ambles up behind you, laughing like that was the joke all along. Just setting you up. The man has a weird sense of humor, sometimes. 

"So then why are you talking about a dog if there's no dog to argue about?" You sniff the air just in case, waiting for that _sike!_ moment. 

"We have no room for a dog, yeah, but what about," and Steve trots around to stand in front of you, taking one of your hands, "a friend of mine?" 

"A friend." You glance from Steve's face to his hand and back again. 

"We've been friends since we were kids, but he's fallen on hard times lately. He needs somewhere to crash while he looks for a place to live." 

"Oh, Jesus." Steve's eyes are already full of pleading, his thumb massaging the back of your hand. "Jesus Christ." 

"I don't want to turn him away, Sam, but you live here, too. And we make decisions together." He inches closer, taking your other hand. 

You sigh. "What's this friend's name?" 

Steve smiles instantly. "James," he says, which sounds like a perfectly regular name, thank God, especially in the face of some of the rabble rousers Steve associates with sometimes. You don't know what kind of a grown man lets himself slide around town on a name like _Dum Dum_. 

"James can stay," you concede. "For a while!" you add while Steve covers your face with grateful kisses, and then you can't add anything else because he's just kissing you, full on. 

"Thank you," Steve says, grinning so hard you're waiting for the top of his head to pop off. And he takes off, presumably to go get this James character. 

You fall back on the couch with a bigger sigh than your last, really digging your ass in and luxuriating in it. You assume James is going to take the couch over so long as he's here, so you better say your goodbyes now. You're so glad you have a laptop so you can at least hole up in the bedroom without too much sacrifice. 

The apartment isn't even that big, a one-bedroom in Battery Park City that you can only afford because of Steve's cushy government job, and because you lucked into a lower price on Craigslist. Well, you say lower, but you still think it's too expensive at over three grand a month. It hurts to pay your half, but you won't let Steve take on any of it, when he already buys most of the groceries. 

You only realize you accidentally fell asleep when you wake up with a start, thanks to the voices—plural—in the entrance hall. You haven't done a single dish, haven't cleared the coffee table like you told yourself you would, but more importantly you're still in your goddamn drawers like a lazy teenager, and you scramble out of the living room, barely escaping before Steve and his friend enter it. 

"Sam?" Steve's voice chases you down the back hall while you slip into the bedroom with as little noise as you can possibly make. Putting that military training to its best use, obviously. You dig for a reasonably clean shirt that's actually yours, since despite you and your boyfriend both being fairly muscular, there's a difference between your _cut_ and his _jacked_. "Sam, come out and meet Bucky." 

Bucky? Who the hell is _Bucky?_

"I mean, uh, James." 

"No, we're not doing the James thing," says the stranger's voice. You scowl at the closet mirror as you hop into a pair of jeans that turn out to be Steve's, and since they just fall right off your hips, that won't work. You want to look at least somewhat dressed but you're running out of time, so you grab sweats you _know_ are yours by virtue of the Air Force branding, and pull those on instead. 

"Sorry," you say as you emerge from the bedroom at last, wearing one of Steve's marathon T-shirts because you gave up on finding anything of yours. "Didn't know when you were coming so I had to run and get dressed." 

James-or-Bucky is a sight. His hair is past his chin, kind of greasy, and his face is practically swallowed up by stubble. His bag hangs off one shoulder, because his other sleeve is tied off just under his stump. He's got enormous bags under his eyes, he's wearing a million dingy layers of clothing with a lot of frayed seams, and overall he just doesn't seem _clean_. He shifts his weight, offers you a hand that's a little grey with all the grit in the whorls of it. "Bucky," he says, which you guess is his introduction. 

"Sam," you reply, shaking that hand and immediately decommissioning it until you can get to a sink. "Steve says you two been friends for a long time." 

"Since we were kids," Bucky says, thumbing at the bottom of his nose with a sniff. "In Brooklyn." He looks at you in that possessive way born-and-raised New Yorkers always do when they think they're encountering a transplant, and you have to laugh. 

"Well I was too far, up in Harlem," you say, "to have met this dumb motherfucker until a couple of years ago." You point at Steve, who grinds his toe into the carpeting with his hands behind his back like _aw, shucks_. Bucky laughs back, elbowing Steve right in the ribs. 

"Why don't you put your bag down by the couch, Buck?" Steve says, guiding Bucky that way. You wanna know how he got a name like Bucky with a legal name like James. You also don't want Bucky sitting on your sage green couch in jeans that look like they haven't been washed since the actual invention of jeans, so right as Bucky starts to aim his ass at your favorite spot on the couch, you say, "You wanna shower first, man? Just to settle in, you know." Play it cool, Sam. 

Bucky and Steve glance at each other, like they're communicating telepathically or something, and Bucky nods. "So long as you guys got towels." 

"Do I look like a man who doesn't own towels?" you reply, trying to take the bite out of your voice. You get halfway there. 

Bucky takes his whole hiking backpack with him into the bathroom, where he's probably putting his boots all over the shaggy white bath mat. Honestly, not until today did you realize how much you cared about the appearance of your home, but before today you also didn't have a dirty white boy stomping around your apartment. 

As soon as the bathroom door closes, you round on Steve. "So what exactly is his story? And what happened to 'James'?" 

"Well." Steve shrugs his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "His middle name is Buchanan, so that's why he's Bucky, but he's still the guy I told you about." 

"Buchanan?" Your eyes almost pop right out of your face. White people name their children the wildest shit. 

"Family name," Steve says, coughing into his fist. You shake your head, heading into the kitchen to wash your hands just like you promised yourself. 

"Bucky ain't much better," you mutter to the faucet as you lather up. "He got a job?" 

"Not right now." When you suck your teeth at that little revelation, Steve says, "He's a vet. He never even really wanted to ship out, and then his arm got blown off. Makes everything harder." 

Well, that softens you a little bit. Your work at the Veterans Center in Brooklyn means you see a lot of people like Bucky, with bad coping skills, lax self care, and missing pieces in every sense. It's good, honest work helping people, and you're glad when your own experiences can shed perspective on someone else's. It doesn't mean you want to bring your work home with you, though. 

"Same unit?" you ask as you dry your hands. Steve nods. He came home whole, quit the armed forces, and went into social services. Met Sam, fell in love, chose an apartment and some furniture. Looks like Bucky's path went a different way, probably diverging the moment he lost his arm. 

"Alright, look. He can stay, and we'll help him however he needs—so _long_ as it doesn't hurt what we've got, like I don't want you missing work to take him places—but he's got to get cleaned up if he's putting his ass on that couch." 

"He's in the shower right now, Sam," Steve says, looking at you all goofy like he doesn't think you're serious. 

"That couch came from _Crate_ and fucking _Barrel_ , Steve, that's the nicest goddamn couch my ass has ever met and he's not getting his sad man crust on it!" You don't shout, exactly, but it's the most aggressive a whisper has ever been as you jab your index finger into Steve's collarbone. 

"Alright, alright," Steve says, hands up to placate you. "He'll wear clean clothes, okay?" 

"Yes. Good." You feel a little puffed up right now, unsure how you got so worked up over this, and you deflate yourself. "Yeah, good." 

Bucky comes out of the shower looking fresher, anyway, long hair tied back real sloppy with a rubber band that looks like it came off some broccoli. His T-shirt is so faded you're barely sure there was ever a graphic on it, and his bottoms are just briefs, like the kind that come in the multipack at Target. Which means you just learned too much about your guest, and you turn your head away with clear annoyance. 

Steve cooks dinner, because it's his turn, but also because he knows Bucky's favorite foods, and he even goes out to buy extra groceries for the dish he's gonna make. He spreads out pizza dough, nice and even like he's done this plenty of times before, even though he's never made pizza like this so long as you've lived with him. The mozzarella is fresh, still marinating in its own salty whey, and he lays out prosciutto, mushrooms and spinach on top. You can't deny it looks good, but you don't see this as a "favorite foods" scenario, considering how hard it is to find anyone who _doesn't_ like pizza. 

As it turns out, part of the allure is that Bucky can eat a slice with his one hand, folding it and dangling it until the hot oil drips onto the plate, and then onto his tongue. You can't help but feel sidelined as Steve and Bucky talk about the good ol' days in Bay Ridge, and the pizza is less appetizing with every guffaw they share. Steve used to get into fights, a skinny little guy who couldn't hit a punching bag without getting punched back, and Bucky always had to bail him out. "Against my will," Steve interjects, because that's apparently important. It's hard to tell whether he's telling you, or just reminding Bucky. 

And you get it. They're age-old friends, going as far back as you and Riley used to. If Riley's dumb ass was suddenly alive again, and _he_ showed up on the doorstep, you'd probably accidentally ignore your boyfriend, too. You'd reminisce, too, about cutting class to sit in the northeast corner of Central Park, eating messy elote with your heads down low. About running from broken-up fights or getting into other fights, about the English teacher who loved your work but had all the signs of being a coke user. About the time you and Riley found the rooftop door open at school. 

But you don't have Riley anymore, and it squeezes your heart so tight you swear it struggles to get to its next beat when you watch Steve clap Bucky on his good shoulder. 

Steve absolutely promises your life together will not change more than five percent. Ten percent, he amends later that day, after you text him several lengthy messages about how you don't understand how Bucky can lock the bathroom door for an hour while you're trying to get ready for work, and emerge looking barely more washed than he did waking up. If he's going to make you late for work, he better come out the shower with bouncing curls, perfect skin and a waxed chest. Steve sends you a bunch of laughing emojis that you don't return. 

The second night of Bucky's stay, Steve whispers that promise in your ear again, says you both just have to be quiet as he grinds up on your ass under the covers. You don't like that you have to be quiet in your own damn apartment, but you _could_ like the challenge of not getting caught, of pressing your face into the pillow when even lips pressed shut won't stop the noises your throat makes. Sure, that could get you hot. And Steve's hands—softer than they used to be, once he quit the armed forces and started raiding your lotion supplies—find their best spots, one curled between you, the other gliding down your stomach, which is also softer than it used to be. 

Except the microwave beeps three times, and you both freeze at the sound of a plate clattering as it's removed, the microwave door slamming shut with a plastic thud. You snort out all your arousal in one body-deflating sigh, and Steve groans as he rolls onto his back. "Twenty percent," he whispers to you. 

"Goodnight, Steve," you grumble into your pillow. 

The following day you have off from work, while Steve doesn't—you each have one day off that syncs up with the other's—and you discover that Bucky is, in fact, fucking nocturnal. You can't relax in your own living room or cook yourself a nice hot lunch because this man is sprawled all over your precious couch with dirty feet and no damn socks on, and he _snores_ on top of it all. You promised Steve you would be kind to him but god _damn_ if this were your friend, you'd have dragged his ass off the couch by now and told him to get clean already. 

That night you tell Steve in hushed, angry tones that you _will_ beat Bucky Barnes's ass if he don't get his act together and sleep normal hours so he can look for a job. Steve looks sheepish, to say the least, and he must have said something quick because the next morning, Bucky looks like a red-eyed beast chugging on your Bustelo. He glares at you over the rim of the mug. 

"You better put those eyes away before I do it for you," you warn him, and suck your teeth. "Glaring at me in my own damn kitchen. Must be out of your goddamn mind." And Bucky lowers his eyes, although his glare is just redirected at the coffee. 

On your lunch break at work you're texting a friend with a much more sympathetic ear, because Steve is biased, but also because you know that your venting to him just comes off as demands to change his old friend. Rhodey commiserates that dating a white man was a poor choice you both made, given the wild shit they and their friends get up to. You both agree, though, that Rhodey's white boyfriend is a hell of a bigger handful than yours, though, and then the conversation turns to all the nonsense his man's been up to lately. 

You get home, your brain a turmoil of other people's problems, and you walk into the living room to find your DVD player in neat little pieces all over the floor. Bucky is kneeling by the mess, unscrewing another two pieces apart as best he can, considering they skitter across the floor without a second hand to hold them in place. 

"What the fuck is this?" You try not to blow up, but that DVD player has been with you since your first place of your own in DC. That shit is _yours._

"Well," Bucky says with a wipe of his brow on the back of his arm, like he thinks he's a mechanic telling you your engine needs a tune-up, "it was having problems loading the disc, so I decided to take a look at it and see what the problem was." 

"You couldn't have just put on Netflix?!" You gesture violently to the TV—it's got apps, for fuck's sake! The DVD player just sticks around for Steve's weird movies he can only watch on collector's edition disc sets, at this point, although that still doesn't mean you think it's this disposable. 

"I wanted to watch one of the movies you guys had, and it wasn't on Netflix, so..." Bucky tapers off into unintelligible mumbling as he leans over his project again. 

"So you took apart my property without permission because you couldn't settle on watching something else." Bucky glances up at this. "That's what you're saying." 

"No, I mean..." He points under the TV, in the dusty spot your DVD player has lived ever since you moved in. "I got you a new one to tide you over. Maybe you'll even like it better." 

The new DVD player is slimmer by far, and a slick silver to the dull black plastic of your original player, but something doesn't add up. You narrow your eyes as you look at Bucky, then the new player, then Bucky again. 

"So you got no job, no place to crash, and chose to spend your time with this DVD player nonsense instead of looking for at least a job, but somehow you got the cash to burn on a new DVD player just for me?" 

Bucky just shrugs without looking back at you, which is classic teenage body language for _I didn't think this lie all the way through_ , except being employed by a grown ass man with one arm and a permanent five o'clock shadow. 

When Steve gets home an hour later, you give him a blistering review of Bucky's latest flaws; you suspect the new DVD player is stolen, but you still can't tell if it was a planned theft to make up for breaking the old one, or if he just Winona Ryder'd that shit on a stroll outside and made up an elaborate story, complete with property damage, to cover for it. Steve admits to you that Bucky had a problem with stealing in his early teens, and you read him the motherfucking riot act for not choosing to disclose that the second he even suggested Bucky might stay with you. 

On the morning of the fifth day, Bucky is trying to do his own dishes, maybe because he heard you selfishly tell Steve you're tired of cleaning up after him. Steve promised he would do all the cleaning, since Bucky was his friend, and said he was sorry Sam had had to do any at all. Bucky has only one hand still, though, and in trying to bring it to the sink with a whole big stack of bowls on top of it, he breaks the second to last plate left from the set you inherited when your great aunt died. 

You hit your breaking point over shattered porcelain powder on your socks, and you tell him to just get out of the fucking kitchen before you snap off his other arm like an action figure. You barely stop yourself from telling him to get out of the apartment entirely. 

That night you and Steve face opposite directions in bed, and you want nothing more than to roll over into his warmth. But every time you think about it, you think instead about his constant defense of his mess of a friend, and how Bucky seems to matter more than you ever have, and you stay right on the edge of your side of the bed, watching the digital clock face tick away the minutes. 

In the morning Steve shows you how sorry he is with deep kisses, and in the glow of his loving presence you're ready to forgive Bucky all his trespasses, because he _is_ Steve's friend, and he _is_ a man living with unchecked trauma, and because Steve wants you to, so badly. You run your hands across Steve's strong chest, telling him you'll try. And because Bucky is still asleep, you have sex for the first time in two weeks, and then Steve is hurrying into the shower while you're hurrying to make breakfast. You try not to look at Bucky drooling on borrowed sheets as you dart out the door, hoping you won't miss the 2 train that will get you to work with five minutes to spare. 

Bucky reports to you, before you're even finished locking the door as you arrive that evening, that he had an interview today, which is a surprise to you. "Oh?" 

"At a club," he says, nodding. You note that he's put the sheets next to the couch in a haphazardly folded stack, which is a nice gesture, anyway. You sit down next to him. You notice, in a way you hadn't before, that he's about as big as Steve—bigger, actually, because where Steve's waist nips in to give him that idealized triangle back, Bucky is built like a fucking brick, with a layer of fat that folds over his belt buckle when he leans forward. "To be a bouncer." 

"So what'd they say?" You note, too, that your DVD player is whole again, back in its rightful place. There's no trace of that other one, and you're pretty glad you don't know more about that. 

"Said I shoulda been up front about being a cripple," Bucky says, taking a sip from his glass of water and laughing into it. "I mean, they didn't say cripple, because employers aren't allowed to say that word now, I think, but I heard it anyway." 

"And what, that was it?" 

"Nah. I put this potato-faced lookin' dude next to me through a table to prove I didn't need two hands to bring the pain, but they didn't really like that, either." 

"No shit," you chuckle. "You really thought that was gonna land you a job?" 

"I dunno." He puts the glass down, leans all the way back on the couch. "Jobs are... Jobs are hard for me. You come home all messed the fuck up, and—" 

"And it's like coming back to a different planet," you finish, and Bucky just looks at you like he's meeting you for the first time. 

"Yeah." You lean back with him, your arms folded over your chest. Bucky's one hand is lax in his lap. "And you need two hands to do most low-level work, even though I've been applying to a lot of that... I don't have much in the way of a skill set, you know?" 

"There's gotta be something you did in the military that translates into a civilian job," you say, just barely on the edge of counseling Bucky like you're still clocked in or something. 

But Bucky just shakes his head, and then he's staring at the window but not out the window, and there's nothing more you can do here. You go to your bedroom to tool around on social media and clickbait sites until Steve gets home. Bucky is completely silent in the living room, for once, and you're not sure whether you should be relieved or suspicious. 

Steve gets home. You cook together, a nice and balanced meal of pork tenderloin with asparagus and barley, though not for the first or last time, you encourage Steve to season the meat a little more. Just a little more. Try this spice. You invite Bucky to eat with you at the kitchen table, or rather Steve does, and he looks at the barley like he expects it to attack him or something, poking at it with his fork. 

Bucky can't cut his meat, but Steve doesn't offer to help, instead letting Bucky spear each chunk of pork at the end of his fork and tearing at it with his teeth. The asparagus offers him a little more frustration when each buttery spear keeps sliding off the tines. But the barley is the worst of all, because when he gets to those last few granules, he chases them around his plate with his fork and gets nowhere with it. In retrospect, mashed potatoes would have been a more sensitive choice, but mashed potatoes are also more effort than you're willing to put in on a weeknight. 

For a moment, it just looks like he's shutting down. His breaths turns shallow, and he pushes his chair out so he can lean over his knees and stare at the tiles between his heels. His fork is still clutched in his white-knuckled hand. 

"Buck," Steve says, soft and low. He reaches for his friend. His fingertips brush the back of Bucky's neck. 

"No!" And Bucky leaps to his feet, staggering back as his arm whips across the table. His plate of food scraps goes flying, shatters against the double pane glass of the kitchen window. 

On a professional level, you know what's happening. Bucky's eyes are wild, his breathing half paralyzed, his brain in the throes of a panic attack triggered by something that would be nothing to someone else. Whatever he's reliving, it's not good, and his tether to reality is temporarily cut. You know this. 

But as Sam Wilson, you can't and won't deal with someone else's trauma at the end of a long day of doing just that, not in your own goddamn kitchen, your own home. No more broken plates. 

You storm into the living room, and you start packing Bucky's bag, violently shoving anything you don't recognize into the bag's depths. Steve is right behind you, trying to predict what you'll grab next so he can block you like he's on a basketball court, arms out and trying to catch your eyes. 

"Nope. Nope. No more of this shit," you say as Steve opens his mouth for another impassioned defense of James Buchanan Barnes. "I don't go to work all day and deal with other people's problems just to come home to it. And neither should you!" You grab what looks like Bucky's toiletry bag out of the bathroom, and marvel at how empty it feels. How, again, is he spending so much fucking time in this room? 

"Sam, please, at least keep your voice down," Steve begs, reaching for the toiletry bag as you stomp back to Bucky's bag. "Don't make him listen to this." 

"Keep my voice down?" you ask, louder than ever. "I live here! This is our apartment! And I know these walls are good and thick because we pay through the goddamn nose for it, so I will be as loud as I goddamn want, Steve! Regardless of your little friend's feelings on the matter!" You stuff the toiletry bag into the backpack, and draw the zipper shut in jagged pulls. 

"I thought you, of all people, would sympathize with him! You deal with veterans with PTSD all day—" 

"I'm not a monster, Steve," you interrupt, and for this, you do speak softer. "I get his problems. I do. The whole longass list, I do. I do! But trauma isn't something you get to impose on other people. Of all people," and you jab yourself right in the collarbone, " _I_ know that." You swallow around the lump that's suddenly forming in your throat. 

"He hasn't had the—the _anything_ you've had, Sam, coming back stateside. He's not trying to 'impose his trauma' on anyone. Would you tell one of your vets that?" 

"Don't talk about my work right now. And you know what, Steve, you're right. He's a victim of a vicious system that we've all been part of." You drop the backpack, packed to bursting, on the coffee table. It wobbles, then rolls off onto the area rug. "Really, it's you who makes the problem here. You're so fixated on Bucky, and his needs, and his problems, that all the stress it's causing _me_ , all that doesn't matter. I just need to swallow it for the sake of _your_ friend." 

"Are you telling me," Steve asks, "that you wouldn't do the same for your friend, if he came back and needed your help?" 

Your nostrils flare. Your heart jumps. 

"I can't, because Riley ain't never _coming_ back," you tell Steve from behind clenched teeth and a trembling lower lip. You push his arms away when he tries to embrace you, when he tries to say how sorry he is he said that. And you want the comfort you know you'll find in his arms, but you can't even look at him right now. 

Steve's sorries are meaningless anyway, because he unpacks Bucky's bag for him while you stand in the entrance hall playing mindlessly with your key ring. You can hear him talking with Bucky, quiet enough that you can't hear it all, but you hear Bucky's response well enough. "I don't know if I'm worth all this," he says, and your gut twists. 

Steve goes to bed without either of you speaking to the other, going as far as laying down and turning out the light, although he doesn't close the door. You enter the bedroom when you think he's asleep, and when you lay down you just look at the expanse of his back in his white sleep shirt, his shoulder high above your head, and you haven't felt this alone in a long time. You have dreams you won't remember, except that they're torturous. 

His hand on your shoulder wakes you the next morning. Your day off together, and it couldn't have come at a worse time. But he kneels next to your side of the bed, already dressed in a full suit, and you frown. 

"Sam," he whispers, one hand gently holding the side of your face. As sleepy as you are, you return the gesture, only remembering that you were mad at him last night without the why. "I have to go. One of my cases—" Steve bites his lip. "I have to stay with this kid in a hotel for a couple days." 

Which means you'll be alone with Bucky. You sit up abruptly, and Steve gets to his feet. "A couple days?" 

"I should be able to come home tomorrow night, if there's no problems," he says, with a demure little smile. 

"Big if," you mutter, thumbing sleep out of one eye. 

"Sam," he says again, and he leans down. "I'm sorry about what I said last night. I've been ignoring you, too, you were right about that." 

"I'm sorry I called you a problem," you say. "You're only a problem when you don't season the goddamn meat." Steve laughs a little bigger at that one. 

"I love you, okay? I'll be back tomorrow night, and if I'm not, feel free to send me all the angry texts you want." 

"Angry texts? Be ready for angry Facetime," you snort. "I love you too." And he kisses you from up above, tender enough for the morning, lingering enough to be sorry, but quick enough for him to get out the door before you drag him back under the covers with you. 

"Please don't kill Bucky!" are his final words to you, before the door shuts behind him with the smallest of slams. 

Which is a promise you think you can keep, but it's hard to feel peaceful when you walk out into your kitchen and you can still see where the plate hit the window and scratched it, despite Steve's best cleanup efforts. Bucky is in there, too, one-handedly frying up a handful of eggs. You learn he knows how to flip eggs without a spatula. 

"Good morning," you say after a few minutes of silence. 

"M'rnin'," Bucky returns, keeping his face turned away from you as he turns off the stove and gets out two plates, one at a time. The toaster oven dings right on time, and he sets the plates in front of its door so he can fling the slices of toast onto the plates with a butter knife. 

The man is making you breakfast, and you haven't even apologized to him yet. Damn. 

"Hey, uh. Bucky." You don't know if you've called him that, or any name at all, to his face so far. "Look, man—" 

"We don't have to talk about it," Bucky says as he passes you a plate, and brings his to the kitchen table. You sit down catty corner to him. "Don't worry about it." 

"No, man, I've _been_ worried about it." The eggs are over easy, gushing out their yellow innards when you jab at them with a corner of toast. "What I said to you—" 

"I said we don't have to talk about it." There's an edge to Bucky's voice that makes you a whole lot less apologetic, and silently you agree, sure, no need to talk about it. Just be a couple of surly men who won't address their feelings, eating eggs and toast instead. 

"Coulda asked me to pick up bacon," you say under your breath, instead. 

Rather than sit around trapped with Bucky and all the awkwardness that surrounds him, especially on your day off, you go out jogging. You meet Rhodey over by the World Financial Center, waterfront side, and together you take a tour of the neighborhood, matching steps as you catch him up on the latest Bucky drama. 

"So now he's hanging onto that tension, huh?" Rhodey says as he plops down onto low steps. You sit down seconds later, breathing deep and feeling the sweat on your chest. 

"Yup. Made breakfast and everything, but wouldn't let me just say like, hey man, sorry for acting like parents fighting in front of the kids, you know? And that shit's so annoying, but like... I don't know, I'm not paid to counsel him." You lean forward, exhaling through your nose and propping your elbows on your knees. 

"Nah. You're not. But it's still kind of your instinct, you know?" Rhodey takes a swig of his water bottle, passes it to you because you always forget one. "You always wanna help people, even when it gets in the way of your own life. Even if you've gotten better at that in your old age," he adds with a grin. 

"Man, shut up," you laugh, backhanding him lightly on the shoulder. "I'm young and sprightly still. Young and beautiful, too." You flip hair you don't have over your shoulder. 

"You wanna come over to the tower for the night? We've got a nice guest room," Rhodey says, scratching at his chin. "Way on the other side of the apartment from me 'n' Tony." He gives you an even bigger grin, and this time you just shove him outright, calling him gutterminded and a pervert and all sorts of other things. He claims he's said nothing to deserve all these labels. 

"Anyway, nah, although I appreciate the offer. Steve would like, gut me if he found out I left Bucky alone like that, especially the night after a panic attack like he had." 

"Sounds like babysitting to me," Rhodey muses. He lurches to his feet, offers your arm to grip to pull you up. 

"Babysittin' nothin'," you snort. "I'm not checking in on him or anything, definitely not cooking him dinner. Just being around is all." 

"Right. Of course, my bad," Rhodey says, in a way that makes you think it's not his bad at all. Mocking you, kind of. Whatever. You stand around for a little while longer, trading a few comments about each other's sneakers like you're talking about the weather, and then you accept Rhodey's invitation to at least come shower back at Stark Tower in midtown and borrow some clothes so you two can hang out longer. Get you away from all the nonsense sitting in your apartment right now. 

You come home a little later than you meant to. It's almost nine when you kick off your shoes in the entrance hall, right next to Bucky's torn up jump boots he still wears even in June. Bucky's just watching something on Netflix, though, filling out a bunch of paper job applications he must have picked up while you were out. It looks like he's watching _Inglourious Basterds_ , which is an interesting choice. He turns it down a few notches the second you enter the living room, and he waves hello, but he doesn't acknowledge you after that. 

Whatever. 

Your bed feels so vast when you get under the sheets that night, the other end of the mattress like an impossible horizon. Which is fucking stupid, of course, it's a queen size bed, not the Atlantic Ocean. You just miss Steve, to the point of hugging his pillow to your face and inhaling the smell of his hair. He likes to shower at night most of the time, a habit you've told him is gonna destroy his hair, so there's a hint of his Head and Shoulders in there. Minty fresh. 

Bucky is still knocking around in the living room, in the sense that he's trying to be quiet, but he's permanently clumsy with an offset center of balance and only one hand. For a moment you wish, with all your heart, that it was Riley in there, that if you had to trade one for the other then you wish it was Riley who had come home instead, no matter how many limbs he had. 

Then the guilt piles high, almost putting you through the floor with its weight. Bucky doesn't deserve that, and Riley would be ashamed of you for making that wish. You fall asleep with your own self-flagellation for a lullaby. 

_You're in the air, up high where it's so cold it feels like everything glistens. Instead of planes you have wings of your own, the wind slicing across your bared skin. You can feel the strong muscles of your wings sprouting from your shoulders, even as you can't, because they're muscles that can't exist._

_And Riley has wings, too, big brown raptor wings with downy white undersides that he manipulates with practiced ease, swooping around you and laughing._

_Riley._

_You want to talk to him, but your mouth is dead, or it's made of stone, and every time you think you might fix that Riley flies way out of range, returning just in time for you to be speechless again. But the sky is clear, an almost cartoonish blue over a bright orange desert, so you give in to the exhilaration. You swoop and dive with him, learning the control of your wings until you're both executing mid-air pirouettes around each other, nearly knocking each other out of the sky with every pass. When you finally get your mouth to open, you let out excited whoops instead._

_That's when the explosions start._

_At first, you and Riley both dodge them with relative ease, folding your wings to dart between explosions close together. A smart bird can't be caught that easily. Riley is still laughing, like this is a game. You try to look down to see who's firing, but every time you try you find yourself looking at the sky again._

_The explosions come closer together now, and you recognize one before it goes off. RPGs. You try to dive, try to get to the ground to stop whoever's responsible for them like you've fantasized so much about, but every time you try you just go up again. You've lost all bearing, except when you can see Riley racing upward with big powerful flaps of his wings, trying to outrace the explosions that chase him._

_You want to at least shout out his name, but your dead stone mouth won't let you do even that much. So you reach out with both hands to watch Riley die, watch a rocket hit him dead on. You try one more time to dive, aiming purposely at Riley falling out of the sky, and instead you fall into your own dizzying tailspin, the wind howling in your ears, your wings coming apart in bloody, feathery chunks that fill your mouth with screams you can't let out—_

"—I've got you, Sam, I've got you." You clutch at the warm hand on your shoulder with both of yours, wheezing as the last of your sleep screams leave you. There's a lap under your head, and a deep voice above, saying soothing words that you can't quite catch yet. 

"Steve?" you gasp, because he's always been your rock when you get like this. When you dream out of control, when you wake up sweating and wondering if you've finally died. 

"Sorry," the voice croaks, and as you relax into the waking world, you know that's not Steve's. You should have known from jump; Steve has two hands. 

You know you should probably move your head, let go of Bucky. Tell him you're fine, and that you're sorry for waking him, so he ought to go back to sleep now. But your grip on Bucky's hand only loosens in the sense that you take one hand away, and you feel so leaden you don't even want to try to move. 

"I'm sorry," you murmur anyway. 

"Ain't no sorry." Bucky squeezes your hand. "I know this is like a walk in the park compared to dealing with me." 

That makes you quiet again, the guilt making your head even heavier on Bucky's thighs. Probably. "Sorry about that, too," you say, almost a whisper. "You've been through a lot. I didn't mean to make it worse." 

"We're both fucked up," Bucky says, which is as close to an acceptance of your apology you're likely to get. "You just hide it better." 

You sit like that for a little while longer, getting a crick in your neck from being wedged up on Bucky's lap like that, holding hands until they're sweaty. You really should let go. 

"You feeling any better?" Bucky asks, after fifteen minutes of silence, and you nod, relaxing your hand at last. He slips out from under your head, lets go of your hand, and in a strangely intimate gesture, he runs his fingers across one side of your hairline before heading for the door. 

"Hey, uh." You hold a hand up, and Bucky pauses, glancing back at you. "Is the couch comfortable for you?" 

Bucky shrugs, see-saws his hand from side to side. So-so. "It's alright, though, I know it's what you got." 

"You think the bed will do you better?" 

"I don't wanna kick you out of your own bed," Bucky says with another shrug. "I'm the guest. I'll be fine." 

"I meant more like—" This is a struggle to get out. "You can just take Steve's side for tonight. No funny shit, just, you know—" 

Bucky laughs through his nose, ambles to the other side of the bed and sits. "Sometimes you just can't deal with being alone with the memories, right?" 

"Yeah." He's saved you from saying anything else. He already knows. 

So Bucky lies down next to you, straight and flat and relaxed like he hasn't slept in a bed in months, and it occurs to you that that's probably true. His arm ends up next to the edge of the bed, but you flop your hand out, fingers curled against his waist, and he reaches over his torso to touch his fingers to yours. 

You wake up to the sun in your eyes, because your preoccupied ass forgot to draw the blinds last night, and with Steve standing in the doorway looking pleasantly baffled. Thankfully you didn't end up like, spooning Bucky in your sleep or something, but he's still in the bed, curled up all the way on the edge with Steve's pillow pulled tight between his head and his good shoulder. 

"I'm, uh, home early," Steve says, scratching his head as he snorts again at the sight of Bucky. "Things turned out better than expected. Here, too, apparently." 

"We worked some stuff out," you say as you slink out of the bed and throw your arms around Steve's neck. He gives you a peck on the lips in greeting. "I'm not saying everything is resolved forever. But we've definitely reached an understanding." 

"Good," Steve says, before loosening his tie. "I picked up bacon, by the way." 

"Bucky'll be happy to cook," you say, grinning. Steve just shakes his head and takes off his tie the rest of the way.

**Author's Note:**

> that's probably it for mcu fics from me, as much as i'd like to write a bunch more! i need to get started writing original work again so i can open my writing patreon this summer. if you like my work, please consider becoming a patron when it goes up, and who knows—with enough support, i'll have enough time to work on fics, too!


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